


If You Come Along

by milanojaguar



Category: The Ghost Bride (TV), The Ghost Bride - Yangsze Choo
Genre: F/M, The Ghost Bride Netflix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26871667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milanojaguar/pseuds/milanojaguar
Summary: So apparently Li Lan’s going to be tagging along with Er Lang now. Which means that he has to figure out how to hide his feelings from his new partner, because she deserves a normal life and because Heavenly Guards aren't supposed to have romantic attachments and because he'll probably be dead in a year.Should be an interesting year.
Relationships: Er Lang/Pan Li Lan
Comments: 17
Kudos: 24





	If You Come Along

**Author's Note:**

> This was a rather difficult story to write, simply because I had a hard time getting a grasp on the show’s cosmology. It seems to be based on what is sometimes termed Chinese folk religion, and like Chinese folk religion, it is highly syncretic, combining elements of Taoism, Buddhism, ancestor worship, Chinese mythology, and so on. But there are also elements that I’ve struggled to find any real-world correlation for, and I’m not sure if those were invented by the book’s author/the screenwriters, or if I’m just not sufficiently versed in Chinese religion to recognize them (highly likely).
> 
> So I’ve definitely had to make some stuff up using my best educated guesses, based on the text of the show and on real-world belief systems, and I’ve undoubtedly written some stuff that is utter nonsense. So the point of all of this, I suppose, is to apologize, and humbly submit that I really did try. :D
> 
> Also, having never read the book, I can only rely on what’s in the show, so discrepancies with the novel undoubtedly abound.
> 
> Also, just FYI, I’ve used the romanizations/naming conventions followed in the subtitles of the American Netflix release of the show, which in some cases doesn’t precisely match what is seen elsewhere.

> > > > >

General Fong, to no one’s surprise, is not happy to learn that Er Lang is allowing a human to tag along on his investigations. “Stupid and dangerous,” she informs him.

In the end, though, she can’t forbid it; technically there aren’t any rules against it, probably because it’s never occurred to any Heavenly Guards to befriend mortals before. The only rule that could cause him any problems is that mortals aren’t supposed to know so much about Heaven and the Netherworld, but that rule went out the window weeks ago, when Li Lan was dragged to the Netherworld to be a reluctant ghost bride because Heavenly Guard hadn’t managed to stop Tian Ching yet.

So the general reluctantly gives her permission, but not before leaning in close to speak firmly. “If you get into trouble because that mortal gets in your way on an assignment, don’t come crying to me for help.”

“When have I ever come crying to you for help before?” he demands. “Someone as talented and clever as me doesn’t need help.”

“Then why do you need the mortal to tag along?” General Fong shoots back.

“I like having an audience to admire my prowess and good looks,” he says reasonably, and she rolls her eyes.

But then her expression softens, and she glances over to make sure Li Lan is still well out of earshot, and then looks down at his arm, where his sleeve conceals a slowly-growing web of dark veins.

“It’s about the same,” he says before she can ask, then hesitates. “Have you learned anything new?”

“Not about stopping it,” she says. “But I spoke to a colleague who’s versed in this sort of thing. He supposes that as a heavenly being, you ought to be able to hold out for at least a year. Maybe more.”

He sighs in relief. He’d supposed he’d have a lot of time, given how little the condition has progressed in the last month, but it’s nice to have confirmation. “Enough time to keep looking for a solution, then.”

General Fong’s expression is tight. “If I’d known that giving up your promotion to Heaven would result in the Netherworld claiming you this way, I never would have allowed it.” It’s the most concern she’s ever showed for him.

“I’ve got time,” he says with more confidence than he feels.

“And if you can’t find a solution?”

He shrugs. “I don’t want to go, but I’ve had five hundred years as a Heavenly Guard. I’ve gotten to live in this mind, in this body, far longer than most people do.”

“Yes, but after all that work, to fade from existence, to die and receive neither Heaven nor reincarnation . . .” She glances again at Li Lan, who’s in the distance, examining a patch of flowers. “Will it have been worth it?”

“Yes,” says Er Lang without hesitation. No sense trying to hide his feelings from the general; she already saw him beg for Li Lan’s life in the Netherworld.

The general smirks a little. “So five hundred years was not enough for you to forget mortal desires after all.” But then her expression softens a little. “In a way, I envy you—a little bit. A _very_ little bit. But . . . I can’t recall the last time I cared about someone like that.”

Her gaze grows distant for a moment, and then snaps back to Er Lang. “You have your next assignment. I’ll be waiting for your report when you complete it.” She hesitates, then adds, “And I’ll keep looking for a solution to your problem as well.”

“Why, General, you do care.”

She rolls her eyes. “I hope to get another few hundred years of service from you. And you can’t do that if you’ve vanished from existence.” With a nod, she vanishes.

So, one year: time to look for a cure, to travel the world with Li Lan, to hide from her his deteriorating condition.

It should be an interesting year.

> > > > >

The first order of business is teaching Li Lan to swim; it would be rather absurd if he gave up his promotion to Heaven to save her life and she immediately drowned while trying to help him run an investigation.

So they find a pond that looks relatively clean and fresh, and take off their outer layers, and wade into the water while Er Lang tries desperately not to look at how Li Lan’s wet shirt clings to her body.

“The first thing to do,” he says, “is to learn not to fear going under the water. So try taking a deep breath, holding it, and then carefully leaning forward and putting your face in the water. You only have to do it for a second, at first.”

Li Lan does not carefully lean forward and put her face in the water. She gulps in a big breath and drops into the water like a stone, fully submerged long enough for Er Lang to start to worry. Then she pops back up, beaming proudly as she wipes water from her face. “That was exciting,” she announces. “My arms floated.”

He’s unable to keep the admiration from his voice. “You certainly are fearless.”

But she gives him one of those open, direct looks of hers and says, “I knew I didn’t have to be worried about anything happening with you watching me. I trust you.”

Then she grins and drops back into the water again, leaving Er Lang to stare at the ripples she left on the pond’s surface, a stunned little smile playing at his lips.

He is such a goner.

> > > > >

Their first case is not what anyone would call a success, at least at first. Er Lang and Li Lan are not in sync, not practically reading each other’s minds, the way they were in the Netherworld; missed communications allow their quarry—a ghost summoned to the world of the living by an unscrupulous medium—to elude them on three separate occasions. Their camp is destroyed by water demons. Li Lan narrowly avoids being bitten by a poisonous spider.

“This is a disaster,” Er Lang informs her.

“It’s just a shaky start,” Li Lan insists. “We’ve never properly worked together in this realm before. We’ll get the hang of it.”

This is just before she is kidnapped by water demons and carried to an island in the middle of a lake, which is bad news, as her swimming is still weak.

Worse news is that Er Lang is attacked by the ghost they’re pursuing just moments later, while Li Lan watches helplessly from across the water. And the fight is not going well: the ghost is fierce and powerful, and Er Lang manages to step in a divot and twist his ankle, and before long the weakened joint gives beneath him and he falls back on the ground.

The ghost is on him in a moment, its grisly, grinning skull drawing ever closer to his face, and it’s all he can do, with his heavenly powers, to keep it at bay. He can’t shove it far enough away to escape, and as soon as he tires and weakens, it will lunge forward and consume him.

And then, like a miracle, a delicate hand appears in his line of sight, holding the talisman he gave Li Lan before they arrived on the island. She shoves the talisman against the skull, right between its hollow eye sockets, and the ghost rears back, howling in pain.

Er Lang immediately takes advantage of the reprieve; in one smooth movement, he grabs his heavenly sword where it has fallen on the ground and rolls to his knees, then slices through the grinning skull with a powerful swing.

The skull explodes. The shroud of rags that made up the ghost’s body unravel, the threads fading into nothingness as they fall to the ground. And Er Lang turns around to see Li Lan, dripping wet and looking extremely proud of herself.

“I think my swimming has improved,” she announces.

And Er Lang finds himself laughing, long and loud, as he has not done in ages. Exhausted and sore, he falls back onto the sandy shore and heaves a great sigh of relief. A moment later, Li Lan seats herself next to him.

“So aren’t you glad to have me along now?” she asks.

Er Lang tips his head back and gazes at the sky. It is as blue as eternity, and the sun is bright, and they are alive and together, and in that moment he is entirely consumed by his happiness and relief. His arms flop to his sides, and his hand lands near enough to Li Lan’s that the outsides of their pinky fingers just barely brush. Maybe Li Lan doesn’t notice, or maybe she doesn’t care. Either way, she doesn’t move.

Er Lang cares. Er Lang feels adrenaline rushing through him, like lightning in his veins, and for once he’s too exhausted to berate himself for being so very affected by this smart-mouthed mortal.

“At this moment,” he agrees, “I am very glad to have you along.”

> > > > >

Er Lang remains conscious of mortal social mores, even if Li Lan doesn’t seem overly bothered by them, and so he carefully keeps his distance at night: if they stay at an inn, he ensures that they sleep in separate rooms, and if they camp in the wild, they sleep on opposite sides of the fire.

But all this goes out the window on the night of the great storm. It strikes suddenly and without warning just as they are preparing for bed, at their little jungle camp a hundred miles from anywhere. From the roaring intensity of the wind and the rain, Er Lang can tell it won’t be a brief storm, over quickly; from Li Lan’s wide-eyed look, she feels the same.

“Can you make it stop?” she demands.

He shakes his head. “I’m pleased you think so highly of me, but controlling the weather is not an ability they give Heavenly Guards.”

They quickly gather their things and run for a nearby cliff; luck is on their side and they find a tiny cave—little more than a hollow in the rock face—that is just large enough for them to sit up in and keep dry. Luckily the direction of the wind is in their favor; it’s blowing the rain away from their little hiding place, which means that as long as the wind doesn’t change too much, they ought to be able to pass the night here in relative safety and dryness.

They make themselves as comfortable as possible. Er Lang places his blanket against the rock face behind them so they can lean back against it comfortably, and Li Lan spreads her blanket over their legs, then cuddles up close to his side, presumably for warmth.

This is all a little more intimate than he’d really like.

No, scratch that, he absolutely loves the intimacy of it, but he knows that he shouldn’t.

He decided, when he first agreed to let Li Lan tag along, that he would keep his distance from her. They would be friends, but that he would not give her any hint of his feelings for her—would not give her any reason to stay by his side. Because he believes, with all his heart, that it will be in her best interest for her to eventually grow tired of her stint as his partner, to pick a less dangerous occupation and to see the world in a way that doesn’t put her in constant mortal peril.

And if she does that, he hopes, for her sake, that one day she finds a man who can love her as she deserves (not some shiftless Heavenly Guard who can do nothing about his feelings for her because he is supposed to be giving up mortal desires and because he could die soon and because if he doesn’t die, then he will still be serving Heaven long after she has died and been reincarnated).

So it’s best if he keeps a distance. He has no idea how she might react if he gave her any hint of just how strongly he feels for her—she can be very inscrutable when she wants to be—but just in case, he hides his feelings, so that she will find it easy to leave him someday, and go live a better life.

These are all very good, very rational points, and they all fly from his head the moment she tips her head sleepily against his shoulder. He freezes, hoping she won’t notice how very, very aware of her he is—then realizes she’s asleep.

And small wonder; she keeps up with him extraordinarily well, considering that she is a mere mortal, but the effort of doing so tires her out. (All the more reason, he thinks, for her to find a less strenuous vocation.) She is usually asleep only moments after laying her head down at night.

Not that he lays awake listening to her breathe or anything.

As the storm rages on, he feels himself relax into the moment. He has not been so close to another person, not had anyone trust him so completely, since . . . ever, and he is moved in a way he did not know he could be. For a while he gives into temptation and lets himself pretend that this can last, that someday there could be a world where Li Lan sleeps sweetly in his arms and soothes his fevered brow when he wakes from a nightmare about the life he left behind five hundred years ago.

And the dream keeps him warm as he tips his head against Li Lan’s and finally succumbs to sleep.

Still, tomorrow, she’s going back to her side of the fire. That’ll make it easier for him to keep the longing at bay.

> > > > >

Even General Fong has to admit that their second and third cases are much more of a success than their first; Er Lang and Li Lan are slowly finding their feet as a partnership.

She gives them their next assignment—to find a lingguai that has been wreaking havoc—and Er Lang tilts his head, regarding her thoughtfully. “Are you deliberately only giving us cases in the world of the living?”

“I’m not letting you bring her to Heaven,” the general responds reasonably.

“Fair enough,” says Er Lang comfortably, more than happy to avoid Heaven for a while. He’s never been well-liked there: too sharp-tongued, too cocky, not submissive enough, unwilling to flatter the people he ought to flatter. Staying here with the one person in all the cosmos who actually likes him? He won’t complain about that.

But maybe General Fong also likes him, at least a little—at least enough that she’s had an idea: she’s going to talk to some judges in the Netherworld about his condition.

“Is that a good idea?” he demands. “We’re really not supposed to go there, as you recall. And they don’t particularly like us.”

“Oh, I know that,” she agrees. “But they also owe us—they owe you—for finding that corrupt judge and restoring balance to the universe. In a way, it’s their fault, what happened to you and to your mortal, for not seeing corruption in their own ranks.”

“So when will you speak to them?”

“We’re trying to set up an appointment to speak, but they’re making me wait,” she snorts derisively. “It’s all a power game. They know they owe me, but they want to make sure I know my place. I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.”

She turns to go, but Er Lang stops her with an outstretched hand. “General,” he says sincerely, “thank you.”

She looks at him in surprise, then smirks. “You’ve learned more manners in one month with your mortal than you did in five hundred years in the Heavenly Guard. Maybe I should be grateful for this foolish idea to let her follow you around.”

“Maybe,” he agrees.

> > > > >

The dark veins have appeared on his right arm as well. Er Lang grits his teeth and tugs his sleeves down a little lower.

> > > > >

Li Lan stares in awe at the bustling port around her, the harbor full of ships, the walls of the British fort gleaming in the distance. Even her awe at the city of Madras, however, apparently cannot keep her from being determined to be a good partner to him.

“So what’s the assignment?” she asks, all business, even as he sees her shooting glances at the dock that their boat is currently pulling into.

He bites back his smile. “There is no assignment,” he says.

She stares.

“I’m still waiting to hear from General Fong about our next mission. In the meantime, we were only half a day’s boat journey from Madras.” He shrugs. “You joined me to see the world, but so far you haven’t gone that far from home. I thought you ought to see India.”

Li Lan blinks, then looks out at the bustling port town, then looks back at Er Lang, her face lighting up with a smile like the sun. “Thank you!” she shouts, and throws her arms around his neck. He barely has time to enjoy it, though, before she’s stepping back and grabbing his hand to tug him along so they can leave the boat.

And she keeps taking his hand, to pull him along to look at every stall and shop and the huge British fort, and Er Lang would take her literally anywhere she wanted to go if he knew it meant she would touch him so much.

She buys a golden bangle from a shopkeeper and wears it every day after that visit to Madras, and Er Lang can’t see it without thinking of the feeling of her hand in his.

> > > > >

No one can give an aggravated sigh quite like General Fong. “Why is that mortal wielding the Sword of Whispering Winds?”

Er Lang glances over to see Li Lan going through the drills he showed her, and grins. “She wanted to learn swordplay. She’s already had to pick that thing up a few times to protect me. Figured she might as well know how to properly use it.”

“Give her a mortal sword.”

Er Lang cocks an eyebrow at her. “To fight ghosts and demons?”

The general levels him with a stern look, then sighs. “Fine, I’ll find a sword effective against supernatural beings, that would be appropriate for a mortal to use.”

“Admit it,” he grins, “you’re coming to like Li Lan. You want to do nice things for her.”

“I like that she’s a good influence on you,” she grumbles. “I like that your solve rate has improved since you two started working together.”

“Maybe all the Heavenly Guard should take mortal companions.”

“Don’t get any smart ideas,” she warns him. “I’m already fielding enough concerned questions about you these days.”

> > > > >

Li Lan writes a letter to Mr. Pan and Amah every time they visit a port or town with the ability to send letters, and the writing of them often makes her a little sad and wistful. Er Lang watches this, befuddled, and finally can’t help but ask about it.

“If you miss them so much,” he demands, “why are you here? You could be home with them, if you want.”

“Still trying to get rid of me?” she asks, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

Yes and no, is the answer to that question, so he ignores it. “Just trying to make sense of your strange mortal ways,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “You always say these things as though you were never mortal,” she mutters.

He ignores her. “If you’re unhappy, you could take steps to fix that. That’s what a sensible person would do.”

Li Lan shakes her head and falls into thought, apparently thinking of how to explain. As they walk in silence, side by side, down the paths of the town, they pass a vendor selling cut mangoes. He knows that she is indifferent to mangoes, but he also knows that she knows that they’re his favorite, so when she buys one to share with him, he can’t fight back a pleased smile.

“I miss my family,” she says finally. “But I’m happy here. And I can still visit, still write . . .” She trails off, popping a piece of mango into her mouth. “And I realized something,” she goes on when she’s finished chewing. “In those weeks after . . . everything. When I thought I would marry Tian Bai.”

Er Lang remembers standing in the Pan family home, and the hollow feeling in his chest as he listened to Li Lan’s family congratulate her on her engagement, and unconsciously his hands clench.

“Unless you get very lucky,” she goes on, “and all your desires align, then you will always miss something. Every choice you make is a sacrifice, because it closes the doors to other choices. If I’d married him, we both would’ve been happy that we’d done what we thought we owed our families, but neither of us would have been able to live our dreams. If I’d stayed with my family, I would have been happy to be with them, but I wouldn’t have gotten any of this.” The sweep of her hand only takes in the streets of the town they’re in, but he knows what she means.

“And if I went home now,” she goes on, “I would miss this: traveling the world—finally fulfilling a dream I’ve had as long as I can remember. Adventure. Keeping mortals safe from monsters and demons. Sleeping under the stars and trying new foods and meeting people I never would have met at home.” She hesitates, and glances up at him before fixing her eyes determinedly forward. “I would miss you.”

He stops walking. It’s not a conscious decision; it is pure shock that renders his legs useless. Li Lan pauses in her walk and glances back at him, and he can’t quite read her expression as she says, “So, yes, I miss my family, but this is the choice I’ve made right now, and I’m happy about it.”

So is Er Lang, come to think of it.

> > > > >

(That “I would miss you” is the closest they’ve ever come to talking about . . . _it._ About the fact that Li Lan ended her engagement to Tian Bai, the man she’s loved since she was young, to follow Er Lang around the world. About that moment they shared by the Well of Memories. About the fact that she gave up her chance to escape the Netherworld to save his life, and he gave up a life of ease in Heaven to save hers. About the fact that she told him, at the beginning of this adventure, that she likes being with him. About the fact that he shouted at her once, in a heated argument, that he would do anything for her.

And he wishes he had the guts to bring it up, because he has no idea what they’re doing here. She wants to see the world, but then what? Is she doing this for a year or two until she gets bored? Or does she see them together twenty years from now?

Or does she see them . . . _together,_ twenty years from now?

Worst case scenario, he’s dead in a year because his sacrifice in the Netherworld left him stuck halfway between life and death. Best case scenario, he stops this curse and they have many adventures together around the globe . . . but then what?

She can’t do this forever; fifty years from now she will be too old and frail to fight demons with him, and he will be as young and vital as ever. Will she go home then? Her father and Amah will be long dead, and she has few other significant connections in her life. She’ll die, and where will her tablet go when she is dead, if she never marries, and Mr. Pan is already gone? How much will Li Lan sacrifice for the sake of this adventure?

If he could marry her, he would; he freely admits that to himself. But what good would that do her? It’s not like he could provide any kind of stability either, being what he is. And anyway, it’s forbidden: he’s a Heavenly Guard, and he’s spent five hundred years trying to rid himself of mortal desires, and he’s failed catastrophically at it so far but that doesn’t mean it’s not a goal he knows he should be working toward.

Besides, who knows if she’d even want that?

Thinking of Li Lan’s uncertain future suffocates him. But Li Lan shows little inclination to talk about her future plans, and if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that no one can force her into anything she doesn’t want to do. Well, except Tian Ching coercing her into becoming a ghost bride, but that’s different.

So all he can do is promise himself that as soon as she shows signs that she has had her fill of traveling the world with him, he will convince her to go home and live a real life.)

(Preferably before the curse in his veins consumes him.)

> > > > >

Er Lang’s frantic search is interrupted by a tugging on the corner of his mind; he’s almost too worried at first to notice it, but it continues, insistent, until he slows down and pays attention to it. And then he grins, and follows the summons to its source.

“Clever girl,” he says, unable to keep the admiration from his voice as he looks at Li Lan; she’s been chained to the wall of a cave by the demon they’re pursuing, but she managed to get her hands on a flower and use it to summon him to her—by holding it and thinking of him, as he once told her to do.

“See, aren’t you glad I’m your partner?” she grins as he works on freeing her from the wall.

Er Lang thinks of the frantic hour he just spent searching for her, convinced she was dead or worse. If she were home, she’d be safe. But if she were home, she wouldn’t be smiling at him, and his pulse wouldn’t be fluttering delightfully at her nearness.

In the end, he doesn’t know how to answer her question. So he doesn’t.

> > > > >

The dark veins have spread from shoulder to wrist on both arms. He uses a glamour to conceal them, but he worries that if something should happen to disrupt his powers, the glamour would fall and Li Lan would learn the truth. So he starts wearing long sleeves constantly.

General Fong doesn’t understand. “It’s got to be hot wearing that all the time,” she points out. “Why don’t you just tell her? She’s going to figure it out eventually.”

She’s not wrong, but Er Lang shakes his head. “She already feels so guilty that I gave up my promotion for her. If she learns about this . . .”

“Love,” says the general, pointing a stern finger at him, “makes you stupid.”

> > > > >

An assignment takes them back to Malacca, and General Fong grants them some time to visit the Pan home. Tears are shed on both sides as Li Lan runs into her family’s waiting arms—it has, after all, been seven months since she saw them last—and Er Lang is touched and moved when Mr. Pan and Amah embrace him as well.

“Thank you for keeping our girl safe,” Mr. Pan tells him solemnly.

“Hey!” Li Lan objects. “Half the time it’s me keeping him safe.”

Er Lang makes a considering face. “Maybe not half the time . . .”

She smacks his shoulder as Mr. Pan and Amah laugh.

They spend a very happy week there. During the day, they visit all of Li Lan’s favorite spots in the area: partly so she can revisit them, and partly so she can introduce Er Lang to them. In the evening, the family eats together at home and Li Lan regales her father and Amah with stories of adventures they’ve had across Asia: in Siam and Ceylon and Annam and Amah’s native Guangdong, and even as far south as Australia.

“I hope we go west next,” she enthuses. “I want to see Arabia.”

Mr. Pan’s eyes light up at the idea, but Amah looks alarmed. “So far away?” she demands.

“Don’t worry, Amah,” Er Lang says lightly. “I’ll keep her safe.” What he thinks, though, is that it would be a bad thing if he should succumb to his condition while they were so far away. He resolves to make sure she always has enough money with her to buy a boat fare home, just in case.

A teasing glint enters Amah’s eyes. “You certainly do take good care of our girl. What a good man you are: caring, determined, brave. Just what a girl should look for in a man.”

Mr. Pan takes up the teasing. “Just what I ought to look for in a son-in-law, I think.”

“Father!” Li Lan cries, and Er Lang sees that she’s gone very red in the face.

Er Lang is just pleased that Amah and Mr. Pan think it’s even a possibility.

Late that night, when the women are have gone up to bed, Mr. Pan invites him to sit a while. Er Lang waves away the pipe he offers—he’s never been a big fan of smoking—but he’s happy to sit with Mr. Pan. He’s never had a father (not one who was around, anyway) and despite their limited acquaintance, Mr. Pan is the nearest anyone has ever come to filling that role.

“So what is going on with you and my daughter?”

Er Lang jumps a little. “Nothing,” he says honestly. “If you mean—romantically. I’m very respectful. I keep my distance.”

“But you love her,” Mr. Pan says—not a question.

Well, the man apparently already knows, so Er Lang nods meekly.

Mr. Pan takes a long draw on his pipe and blows the smoke out slowly. “Do you marry? Your kind?”

Er Lang shakes his head. “Part of being a Heavenly Guard is eschewing all mortal desires.”

“Pity,” says Mr. Pan. “I would have given the match my blessing.”

All this does is make Er Lang feel like a giant hand is squeezing his heart, so he changes the subject. “Does it worry you? Your daughter out there alone?”

“She’s not alone,” Mr. Pan says simply. “She has you. But yes, absolutely, it worries me.”

“Then why . . .”

Mr. Pans sighs. “My wife was a free spirit, like Li Lan. She wanted our daughter to see the world, to follow her dreams, to never be forced into a situation that would make her unhappy. When she died, I swore I would uphold Hsiao Yu’s hopes for Li Lan.” He shrugs. “And this, right now, is what makes her happy.”

Er Lang is quiet a long moment. Then he informs Mr. Pan, “I hope to persuade her to live a less dangerous life someday. To find a different way to travel the world, perhaps. And to find someone to marry, if she wants to marry.”

“My Li Lan has never wanted to marry,” Mr. Pan chuckles. “She has always seen it as just a set of rules she would have to follow, and a man she would have to be obedient to. And worse, a man she might not be able influence as much as she does her father.” He takes another draw on the pipe. “She would only agree to it out of the deepest love. And only if she trusted that the man she married would not try to limit her freedom.” His eyes grow wistful for a moment. “We all thought she had that with Tian Bai. And truth be told, I was so pleased about the match. With him, she would never want for anything, and more than that, she would have a good man, who truly loved her and would treat her well. And she thought she wanted that for a while, too.” He sighs. “But I saw the light in her eyes dim during their engagement. I saw her come to realize everything she would give up for that marriage. So I told her she didn’t have to marry Tian Bai. I told her that whatever path she chose, she should be certain.”

“Was that when she ended the engagement?” Er Lang asks curiously. Li Lan has never told him anything about breaking things off with Tian Bai, other than that it happened. He’s always wondered how closely the ending of the engagement coincided with her summoning him to her house.

“Around that time.” He sighs. “Listen to me, rambling away like an old man. Just—” He hesitates, then sets a hand on Er Lang’s shoulder. “Whatever you and my daughter are or aren’t to each other, I’m glad she has you to look after her.”

And Er Lang basks in the warm glow of parental approval.

> > > > >

“Ladies, ladies. I cannot thank you enough for your help. Here, let me leave you with a token of my admiration: beautiful flowers, for beautiful young women.”

The village girls giggle as he reaches behind their ears, one at a time, and presents them with beautiful blossoms. Two delicately smell their flowers, but the third looks up at him quite boldly. “Leaving so soon?” she asks coquettishly.

Nice try, he wants to tell her. “I’m afraid I must, though it grieves me. Perhaps someday we can meet again.”

He waves them all goodbye and makes his way to a nearby alley, where Li Lan is waiting with her arms folded across her chest. “Laying it on a little thick, aren’t we?”

Er Lang looks at her folded arms, then back in the direction he just came from, and then at her irritated expression. And he breaks into a grin. “Why, Pan Xiaojie, are you jealous?”

“You’re ridiculous,” she informs him. “Let’s go.”

“It’s understandable to be jealous,” he calls after her. “I can understand how you’d look at all this masculine beauty and not want to share with anyone else.”

“I’m going to leave you on this forsaken island,” she threatens without looking back.

He grins.

> > > > >

Considering the fact that he’s been fighting demons and monsters and ghosts with only a mortal for backup, it’s surprising it takes so long for Er Lang to get badly injured in Li Lan’s presence. He shakily forces himself to his feet and looks over in time to see Li Lan finish the yaoguai off with a mighty swing of her blade.

“Remind me to thank General Fong again for this sword,” she grins, looking down at the weapon in her hand, and that’s when a wave of dizziness hits him and he falls, gasping, to his hands and knees. As a heavenly being, he feels little pain when hurt in the world of the living, but he can still be badly injured.

“Er Lang!” cries Li Lan, who apparently hadn’t noticed him being struck, and runs to his side. “What do I do?” she demands.

He gestures weakly and conjures a vial of a healing elixir. “Pour this on the wound,” he requests. He’d do it himself, but it would be hard to aim correctly, pouring it on his own back.

She takes it from his hand. “Take your shirt off,” she commands, and he obediently pushes himself up to obey. But he’s unsteady, and Li Lan has to help him into a sitting position and then carefully peel his shirt away from the wound and pull it over his head. He is glad that he’s thought to keep the glamour up all the time, or she’d see the dark veins that are now spreading across his chest and back.

Li Lan looks at the wound and inhales sharply.

“I know,” Er Lang says weakly. “You’ve never seen a man look so good with his shirt off, right?”

She lets out a little bark of laughter, but it’s wobbly, and that’s when he realizes that she’s genuinely shaken. Perhaps the injury is worse than he thought.

He hears the pop of the bottle being opened, then feels the sting of liquid hitting the wound, but quickly the pain turns to blessed relief. He’s see this elixir work many times, and can imagine what she’s seeing: wounds shrinking, skin knitting itself back together.

Soon his weakness and dizziness is gone, and he lets out a sigh of relief and stretches.

“Stay there,” Li Lan commands, and he freezes while she hurries to her pack and returns with their drinking water and a soft cloth. And then, to his surprise, she begins to wash his back. “You’re covered with blood,” she explains, and her voice is still shaky.

Er Lang barely dares to breathe, let alone move. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“I need a bottle of that elixir,” she demands a moment later.

He blinks and turns back to look at her. “It doesn’t work on mortals.”

“Not for me.” Her mouth is set in a tight, flat line. “To keep in my pack. What if you’d been knocked unconscious? What if you weren’t awake to conjure something to heal yourself? You could have died.”

He glances at the cloth she used to clean his skin and sees that it is stained blue with far more blood than he expected. Maybe she has a point about him potentially dying from an injury.

So he conjures two: a bottle to be used on him, and a different elixir she can use on herself, if needed. When she reaches out to take them, he sees that her hands are still a little unsteady, and on impulse, he reaches out to wrap his long-fingered hands around her small ones. “I’m fine,” he says gently. “See? No permanent damage.”

She looks down at their joined hands, and up at him, and he sees that he was right: the stress of seeing him so badly injured has taken a toll on her (she hasn’t quite learned yet just how much damage a heavenly body can take and still be fine). She looks at him a long moment, and then she pulls her hands from his, carefully puts the two vials in her pocket, and then lunges forward to wrap her arms around him.

After a long, dumbstruck moment (she is touching his bare shoulders, does she realize that?), he recovers enough to reciprocate, gently at first, but then tighter, to match how tightly she’s holding him.

Three hugs in five hundred years, and they’re all from Li Lan. He should probably feel bad about how pathetic he is, but he’s too busy memorizing what it’s like to have someone hold him like it matters to them whether he lives or dies.

“You don’t need to worry about me so much,” he assures her gently.

Li Lan leans back, keeping her hands on his shoulders, and examines him for a long time with a serious face. He has just started to shift uncomfortably under that gaze when he sees something change in her expression—become set and determined, as though she has just made a decision. “You,” she informs him firmly, “don’t get to decide how I feel about you.”

And before he can parse that statement, she is pulling him back into her embrace.

It’s nice. Maybe he should get critically injured more often.

(Stupid joke. Li Lan would scold him for that one.)

> > > > >

General Fong’s serious expression—even more serious than normal—is his first clue that she isn’t here just to give him the next assignment.

“I’ve finally gotten the judges of the Netherworld to speak to me.”

Er Lang’s pulse accelerates. He’s managed to keep calm these last ten months since he found himself stuck between the worlds of the living and the dead: he’s told himself that he will do everything he can to stop it, and that he has General Fong on his side; he’s told himself that even if he dies now, he’s had five hundred years as a Heavenly Guard, and he hasn’t always enjoyed it but he’s certainly gotten to see the world and have plenty of adventures; he’s told himself he’s ready to go, if it’s his time.

But he has a harder and harder time believing it as the months drag on. He watches the dark veins make their slow journey across his skin, and he feels the encroaching nothingness, and he admits that he feels fear.

But more than that, if he dies, he’ll be sorry to leave Li Lan behind. He told himself, when he agreed to her tagging along, that he wouldn’t get too attached. Well, obviously he’s already attached, but he wouldn’t let that attachment mean anything. He would love her quietly, from afar, in a way that would make it easier for both of them when it inevitably ends. But that distance is eroding with every day that passes. He’s had nine months now of Li Lan by his side, talking and laughing, sharing food and water and campsites and stories and jokes and secrets. Nine months of waking in the morning to the sight of Li Lan sleeping sweetly on the other side of the campfire. Nine months of solving mysteries together. Nine months of fighting together and protecting each other and bandaging up each other’s wounds.

Nine months of not being alone in the cosmos. And now the thought of leaving her hurts more than he knew he could still feel.

So if General Fong has a solution . . . “What did they say?”

“There is an artifact,” she says. “The Gengsheng Stele. The inscription on it gives them the power to restore the dead to life. It used to be in their possession—only for them to use under very particular circumstances, of course. Ten years ago it was stolen. If you will return their stolen artifact, then as thanks, they will use it to restore you.”

“They cannot get it themselves? Where is it, that it’s so impossible to retrieve?”

“On an island at the edge of the sea, surrounded by sea serpents and water demons and shuigui and a never-ending typhoon. The island itself is inhabited by one thousand spirits and demons.”

“Better and better,” Er Lang grumbles. “And the stele itself?”

“In the heart of a cave at the center of the island, in which lives Lao Zhu, the wolf spider demon.”

“Lao Zhu?” Er Lang repeats. “Isn’t he—”

“The demon who killed Ma Sha,” General Fong confirms gravely.

His good mood from earlier is destroyed. Ma Sha was one of the greatest of the Heavenly Guard, a fierce warrior and a resourceful trickster. “If Ma Sha couldn’t defeat Lao Zhu—”

“You’ll have an edge that Ma Sha did not,” says the general. “Lao Zhu is blind; he relies entirely on smell and his ability to sense vibrations. His sense of smell is keen; he will detect any immortal or undead being as soon as it sets foot in his cave.”

“And how does that help—” Er Lang feels the ground drop out beneath him when he suddenly realizes what she is saying. “No.”

“Lao Zhu cannot smell a mortal,” she goes on as if he hadn’t spoken. “It is his one weakness.”

“No,” Er Lang repeats sharply. 

“That is why the judges have been unable to retrieve the stele. They needed an immortal clever enough to get to the cave, working with a mortal clever enough to retrieve the stele. They’ve never had two such people who are willing to do it.”

“He killed Ma Sha! I will not let her face him alone.”

“She will not face him!” General Fong insists. “She will sneak into his cave and out again. The first judge will lend you his earthquake-causing amulet. If you cause an earthquake while she’s in there, the demon will be too overwhelmed by those vibrations to sense hers.”

“An earthquake while she’s in a cave! Brilliant. If the demon doesn’t kill her, I can bring a rock down on her head instead.”

“A mild earthquake. Just enough to distract him.”’

“I already sacrificed everything I had to give to keep her alive. I will not let her die on some fool’s errand.”

“Not even if it saves your life?” she snaps, her patience finally wearing thin. “I went to a great deal of effort to get this information for you, little ingrate. Will you thank me by ignoring it?”

She’s right; he should be careful not to alienate his one (reluctant) ally in the Heavenly Guard. “I am profoundly grateful,” he says with a bow. “But I will think of a way to get past Lao Zhu without getting Li Lan involved.”

“She is just a mortal. She will die eventually, no matter what. And as a mortal who has done so many good works, she will certainly be reincarnated into a good life. Why do you fear that outcome so much?”

Er Lang simply looks at her.

General Fong shakes her head. “Love,” she tells him, not for the first time, “makes you stupid.”

> > > > >

Er Lang is in a dark mood after that meeting, and it lingers for a few days. Li Lan keeps shooting him questioning looks, which he pretends not to notice.

He thinks constantly about the problem before him, about the island and the cave and the spider demon, mentally going through every ally he’s ever made, every favor anyone owes him, every magical demon-slaying artifact he’s ever heard of. But he’s no closer to finding a solution.

After three days of this, Li Lan disappears into town and comes back with a basket of mangoes and sugar cane. “I don’t know what’s got you in this mood,” she says in response to his questioning look, “but I’m here to listen. And I’ve brought you your favorite snacks.”

Er Lang stares at her. And then one of the walls he’s always kept between his heart and Li Lan comes crumbling down, and he lets himself be bold enough to step forward, cup her face with his hands, and press his lips to her forehead. “Thank you,” he murmurs against her skin.

She is staring at him with wide eyes when he pulls back, but she doesn’t seem angry at the contact, and that is not helping his resolve to keep his distance, to protect them both from pain.

He forces himself to pull his hands away from her face. “I’ve just been feeling unwell. It can happen even to us Heavenly Guards.”

Li Lan does not look convinced, but Er Lang doesn’t give her time to think about it. “And now, I believe you brought me mangoes?”

> > > > >

A few weeks later is the anniversary of Hsiao Yu’s death. They are a thousand miles from Malacca, but they go to the nearest temple to light incense for Li Lan’s mother.

“You didn’t have to come,” Li Lan says quietly.

“Of course I did,” says Er Lang. “I loved your mother. She was loving and kind and clever . . . and saved my life a time or two, as I recall.”

Li Lan smiles and looks down at the burning incense. “It’s strange to think that she’s probably reincarnated by now. I wonder who she is. I wonder if I’ll ever meet her.”

Er Lang wonders how many times now he’s had these same thoughts about his own mother, dead these five centuries. “I have no doubt she’s still extraordinary,” he says quietly.

Li Lan glances at him. Then, turning her gaze back to the incense burning before them, she reaches out and carefully takes his hand.

He knows all the reasons he shouldn’t. But he lets himself enjoy it, just for a moment.

> > > > >

“You two seem sweet,” gushes the old woman, and Er Lang wonders why she’s looking at them like _that_ until he looks down and sees that he has unconsciously placed a hand on the small of Li Lan’s back.

He’s been doing that lately, without quite meaning to. It’s just that ever since he was so badly injured that one time, he and Li Lan have been a little more tactile in their interactions. There’s the time he kissed her forehead, and the time she held his hand, but even just in small, daily interactions, they’re far more willing to touch these days: a friendly nudge after a joke, him catching her arm to guide her somewhere, her resting her head against his shoulder after a long day.

He’s not sure why she does it—what changed between them that day—though he certainly knows why he does it, lovesick fool that he is. But he’s not going to beat himself up about it; the dark veins are creeping up his neck and his impending doom hangs over his head like a hungry ghost and he wants to spend his last weeks alive touching the only girl he’s ever loved in five hundred years, is that so much to ask for?

But Li Lan doesn’t seem bothered by his touch on her back, so he doesn’t move . . . until the old woman asks “So how long have you two been married?” and he jumps guiltily and removes his hand.

Li Lan calmly captures that hand in her own and interlaces their fingers. “We’re not married . . . yet,” she say with a wink, and the woman smiles in understanding.

“Ah, so how long have you known each other?”

“It’s been a year, hasn’t it, sweetheart?” Li Lan beams up at him, just like a woman in love would do, and his heart stops.

“Yes, almost exactly a year,” he manages to say.

The old woman looks at them a long moment, then nods decisively. “Stay for dinner,” she says. “I don’t often get to meet such nice young people.”

“We’d be honored,” Er Lang calls after her as she turns to head inside the house, and then he turns to Li Lan. “Why did you tell her we were engaged?” he hisses.

“We need information on her son,” she whispers back. “We need her to trust us. And two young people in love, on a walk on a sunny afternoon, are a lot less threatening than two strangers bursting out of the forest and demanding answers.”

“We didn’t burst out of the forest,” he retorts. But the damage is done, the old woman already thinks they’re a couple, and to tell her the truth now would cause even more problems. Besides, he’s never had a problem lying on a case before . . . it’s just that this particular lie hits rather close to home.

She flutters her eyelashes at him. “Are you saying you don’t want to be my fiancee?”

He supposes this is the comeuppance he deserves, for always flirting with girls to solve cases: now Li Lan is going to flirt with him to solve a case.

Which actually isn’t a bad way to spend an evening.

So they follow the old woman into her home and dine with her and her husband and her two youngest daughters. “So how did you two meet?” the old woman asks.

Li Lan looks up from where she’s dishing an omelet onto Er Lang’s plate. “At a neighbor’s party,” she says.

A memory of that first meeting pops into Er Lang’s mind, and he smiles fondly. “I caught her hiding in the son’s bedroom.”

Li Lan’s jaw drops. “No—that makes me sound terrible! Don’t listen to him. He’s a liar.”

Er Lang smirks and starts dishing noodles onto Li Lan’s dish; she glares at him and mutters “You think I want your noodles when you’re shaming me in front of strangers?”

He winks at her.

“So what actually happened?” the old woman’s husband asks.

“The son had died,” Li Lan explains. “I went into his room to pay my respects. But servants came in and I felt strange being there alone, so I hid until they left. And that’s when he found me.”

“She thought I was a servant too,” Er Lang tells the rest of the table conspiratorially.

She glares at him. “I can’t take you anywhere,” she says, but he sees laughter behind the exasperation in her eyes.

“And what made you two fall in love?” asks the teenaged daughter, probably daydreaming of her own future romances.

“I love that he never teases me in public,” she says sarcastically.

“I love how irritated she gets when I tease her in public,” Er Lang responds, then laughs as Li Lan crosses her arms defiantly across her chest. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he says, leaning close, and is glad that he can use their audience as an excuse to place one hand on the small of her back and use the other to untuck her arm, pull her hand to his mouth, and press a kiss to her knuckles.

Her glare is challenging, but there’s a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.

“You two are adorable,” says the old woman. “You remind me of us at your age.”

Her husband smiles fondly.

It’s the best and worst night imaginable. The best, because it’s everything he wants. The worst, because it reminds him he can never truly have it. Li Lan is an excellent fake fiancee, answering all questions in ways that are never actually lies, calling him pet names, dishing out choice bits of food for him . . . On three separate occasions, she says “Oh, try this, I think you’ll really like it” and makes him try a food and turns out to be absolutely correct: he loves it. Li Lan knows him as well as . . . well, she knows him as well as his fiancée would know him, if he were allowed to have one.

And the constant touching! He could almost swear she’s doing it on purpose, to fluster him; at every possible moment, she is brushing against him, nudging him, squeezing his hand, leaning her head against his shoulder. She even puts her hand on his thigh at one point, and it is the sweetest sort of torture.

“What are you doing?” he finally asks.

She just smiles.

Still, all things considered, if he’s going to die soon, he thinks this is a great way to spend one of his last nights alive.

> > > > >

It’s the very next day that everything falls apart. They locate the son, who tearfully admits that he summoned a sky serpent and now it’s gotten away from him. They get the villagers to safety. They seek out the sky serpent on a hilltop, and the ensuing battle is long and fierce, and somewhere along the way Er Lang is bitten.

He’s immediately driven to his knees by pain and weakness. Sky serpents are particularly dangerous, he remembers belatedly; their venom not only poisons the body, it also strips supernatural beings of their powers for as long as it remains in the system. This means that his supernatural defenses against pain vanish as soon as the venom enters his bloodstream, and he feels true pain, as a mortal would.

Not for the first time in their partnership, it is up to Li Lan to finish the monster, and this she does with aplomb; Er Lang doesn’t even try to hide the admiration in his eyes as he watches her engage the serpent in a deadly dance, finally thrusting her sword through its jaw. It has barely hit the ground before she is decapitating it, to be sure it’s dead, and then running to his side.

“How bad is it?” she demands, and barely waits for an answer before grabbing his shoulders and pulling him to a sheltered spot nearby where her pack is waiting.

It’s a lucky thing that she demanded to be given that healing elixir all those months ago, because she was right: they’ve found themselves in a situation where he is unable to summon anything. She digs the vial out from her bag, then makes quick work of unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it open so she can get at the wound in his shoulder.

His head is getting fuzzier, but he’s sure he hears her gasp. At the wound, he supposes? A stinging sensation in his shoulder tells him she’s poured the healing elixir over the bite, and he gasps in relief as the pain begins to subside. But only a little; the wounds are healed, but the venom is still in his system.

The edges of his vision are beginning to get dark. Nothing to worry about; he’s survived worse sky serpent bites before. But it does occur to his increasingly unfocused mind to reassure Li Lan, “My body needs to . . . burn the venom out. Might . . . sleep for a few days.”

He forces his eyes to focus on her face, and sees that her brow is furrowed in concern. “Er Lang,” she whispers with fear in her voice, and sets a gentle hand against his bare chest.

He blinks and looks down, wondering why there’s a dark spiderweb under her hand. That’s never happened with a sky serpent bite before.

 _Oh,_ he realizes in a last burst of mental clarity before he succumbs to unconsciousness. The venom disrupted his powers, so the glamour fell.

Well, now she knows, is his last thought before everything goes dark.

> > > > >

He awakes a day and a half later to find no more pain, no more mental fog, and a furious Li Lan waiting for him. “Er Lang!” she exclaims when she sees him open his eyes. “How do you feel? Is the venom out of your system?”

He yawns and stretches. “I think so,” he says, starting to sit up, only to have Li Lan rush over and push him back to the ground with a firm hand.

“Then why don’t you tell me what in the world is going on here?” she demands.

He blinks at her.

She gestures at his body with her free hand. “I thought that it was a side effect of the venom,” she says. “But it didn’t go away, even when your color improved and you stopped sweating and tossing and turning. And then I realized it looks familiar.”

He glances down to see his shirt still open, and his skin covered with a web of dark veins, and he closes his eyes as he wonders what to say.

“Is it what happened to me and my father?” she demands. “Are you trapped between life and death?”

He arranges his face into a reassuring smile and open his eyes. “I’m fine,” he assures her, and tries to sit up.

She just pushes him more firmly back down to the ground. “Er Lang, tell me the truth or I swear I will feed you to the next monster we see.”

Er Lang stares up at her drawn face and her tear-filled eyes and the tight, unhappy line of her lips, and he sighs. She’ll know in a few weeks when he dies, right? So he gives her a tiny nod.

“How?” she demands. “Why? When? When we were in the Netherworld?”

Another nod.

She finally removes her hand from his chest and sits back, looking stricken. “I didn’t think that could happen to heavenly beings,” she says. “Is it because of what happened there? Is it because of me?”

“It’s because we didn’t stop Tian Ching in time,” he says firmly, pushing himself up into a sitting position. “This is the fault of the Heavenly Guard.”

She ignores him. “Is it because you gave up your promotion?”

“To be honest, it’s not entirely clear—” 

“Answer me!” she demands, and a single tear drips down her face.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he says soothingly.

“What can be done?”

He just gives her a small smile. She lets out a huff of annoyance.

And apparently she’s been watching him well, because in one quick movement, she pulls the tortoiseshell from his belt, lifts it to her lips, and blows.

The shell glows golden, and a portal opens in the sky above them; a moment later, General Fong is there before them. “I am not accustomed to being summoned by mortals,” she says, lifting one imperious eyebrow, but her demeanor changes when she sees Er Lang without his glamour. “You’re nearly out of time,” she says bluntly, and there’s concern on her face.

“Did this happen because of me?” Li Lan demands without preamble.

General Fong turns to examine her—the first time they have ever properly met—and she must like something in what she sees, because her expression softens, and she gives a small nod. “Because of the choice he made to save you. None of us knew this should be the result. But yes, his change of state, while in the Netherworld, seems to have triggered something that caused the Netherworld to claim him. Well, half-claim him.”

Li Lan scrambles to her feet. “What can be done?”

The general looks to Er Lang, and then to Li Lan, and says nothing.

“Please!” Li Lan demands, and Er Lang can hear tears in her voice. “There must be something we can do. And he won’t tell me anything.”

Er Lang gives the general a warning look. She looks thoughtfully at him, and back to Li Lan. “What would you do, to save him?”

“Whatever it took,” Li Lan responds promptly.

“Don’t you dare,” says Er Lang, speaking to both of them.

General Fong gives him a quelling glance, then turns to Li Lan. “There’s a way to save him.”

Er Lang scrambles to his feet. “General!”

Li Lan’s face lights up with hope. “There is?”

She nods. “He wouldn’t tell you because he thinks it puts you in danger.”

“It doesn’t concern Li Lan,” he insists. “It’s none of her business.”

“You have made it her business,” the general says. “By letting her tag along with you. You think that after spending every day together for a year, it won’t affect her badly to watch you die?”

He blinks in surprise.

“Tell me,” Li Lan begs.

“You can’t get involved,” Er Lang insists.

“Try to stop me.”

General Fong sighs. “You two fools: both so ready to die for each other. But it seems a silly waste to watch Er Lang fade to nothing when it could be prevented.”

And before Er Lang can stop her, she tells Li Lan about the island and the cave and the wolf spider demon and the stele, and to his horror, Li Lan nods firmly all the while. “Sounds fairly doable, really,” Li Lan observes. “The hardest part will be getting to the cave.”

“No!” Er Lang insists. “You don’t understand how dangerous this demon is. You cannot fight it.”

“I won’t fight it,” Li Lan says reasonably. “I’ll sneak past it.”

“And if something goes wrong—no, _when_ something goes wrong? And I can’t go with you into the cave to protect you? I didn’t give up my promotion to save your life, only to have you die trying to save mine. I won’t take you there. I refuse.”

Li Lan glares at him. “General,” she says without breaking eye contact with Er Lang, “how close can your powers get me to the island?”

The general grins. “I like this mortal,” she announces. “I can get you fairly close. You’ll still have some sailing to do.”

“Then we’d better get going,” Li Lan says. “Er Lang, I suppose I’ll see you when I get back.”

“Li Lan!” He grabs her arm. “Please. I promised your family I’d keep you safe. I’ll blame myself if you don’t go home alive.”

“Then keep me safe by coming with me.”

“Why are you so headstrong?” he demands. “Didn’t you promise, when I said you could come with me, to listen to everything I said and not talk back to me?”

“The rules changed when I found out you’re letting yourself die because of some misguided idea about protecting me!” she shouts back. “You think I want to live with the pain of knowing you died for me? When I could have saved you? You think I want to live in a world where you no longer exist?”

“Why are you so stubborn?” he yells.

“Why are you so dense?” she retorts, and grabs the front of his shirt, and pulls him down to her height, and presses her lips to his.

It’s brief and defiant and honestly not much of a kiss at all, and it’s still the most incredible thing that’s ever happened to him. Much too quickly she pushes him away again. “Now, are you coming? Or am I doing this alone?”

Stunned into submission, Er Lang prevaricates only a moment longer before reluctantly conceding. “I’m coming.”

“Good, get your things; we’re leaving now.”

Still shell-shocked, he glances over to see General Fong watching him with a contemplative look on her face.

> > > > >

General Fong gets them past the typhoon and close to the island, but it still takes them a half-day of sailing—and of fending off water demons and shuigui—to reach the shore.

In a slow moment, Er Lang looks over at Li Lan. She is sitting up in the back of the boat, stiff as a board with her hand on her sword, and from the set of her jaw, he’s fairly certain she’s still mad at him.

“So, are we going to talk about it?” he asks finally, because his mind has been absolutely reeling for the last twelve hours.

She doesn’t need to ask what he means. “We will talk about it when you are no longer dying!” she barks, and Er Lang nods meekly and returns his attention to the water.

> > > > >

It takes three days to fight their way to the cave at the center of the island, and they send a sizable portion of the ghosts and demons who inhabit the place back to the Netherworld in the process. At night, it takes all the power that Er Lang can summon, along with the help of a handful of talismans that the general lent them, to shield their camp from detection long enough for them to get any sleep.

Er Lang spends at least half the time plotting ways to force Li Lan off the island, for her own good, but in the end he concludes that it’s only delaying the inevitable; if he tries, she’ll just get General Fong to bring her back. So all he can do is go along with this madness, and pray with all his heart that he isn’t hand-delivering her to her death.

(Another large chunk of his time, obviously, is spent thinking about that kiss. But she refuses to talk about it, and he has no idea what he’s supposed to think, so that usually just results in his mind going in circles until he’s exhausted.)

Their last night, they camp on the side of a hill not far from their destination, and when the morning sun rises, Er Lang can see the mouth of the massive cave, half a mile away. He sits on the ground and stares at it, dread building in his chest until he’s choking on it, and he jumps about a foot in the air when he feels Li Lan’s hand on his shoulder.

“I’m going to be fine,” she reassures him quietly. “I’ve faced guardians of the Netherworld, and vengeful ghosts, and more demons than I can count. And I’m not going to fight Lao Zhu. I’m going to sneak right by him.”

“So many things could go wrong,” he insists. “What if the earthquake trick doesn’t work, and he can pick out your footsteps? What if you trip? What if you cough? What if you drop something? The smallest thing could catch his attention. You would be dead! _Dead,_ Li Lan, and it would be my fault.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promises, then bends down to drop a kiss on the top of his head.

Which does nothing for his near-panic.

In silence they break camp, and then sit on a flat rock to share a breakfast.

“Once we leave this spot, we’ll need to move in absolute silence,” says Er Lang, his gaze fixed on the cave entrance. “We don’t want to attract any attention on our way to the cave—even a ghost following us could draw Lao Zhu’s notice.”

Li Lan nods her understanding.

He hesitates. “I know you’re sick of me saying this, but you don’t have to do this for me. I don’t _want_ you to do this for me.”

“Yes, you’ve made your feelings about this perfectly clear,” she says. “I’m still doing it. I want to do this.”

“I’m not saying this for the sake of bossing you around,” he insists. “This is for your own good.”

“Please stop thinking you know me better than I know myself,” she retorts. “I can do this. Remember how I told you that you don’t get to decide how I feel about you? You also don’t get to decide what’s best for me. I will gladly hear your advice, but in the end, it’s my decision.”

They sit in a silence a long few moments, while Er Lang’s heart races and his stomach feels like a flock of butterflies is swarming inside. It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask “How _do_ you feel about me?” when Li Lan suddenly stands from the rock.

“I’m ready,” she announces. “And I’m leaving now, before you try to talk me out of it again.”

So Er Lang can do nothing but gather his things and follow her carefully down the hill.

It is a long, painstaking journey, moving as stealthily as they are, but finally they are at the cave. Er Lang doesn’t dare get too close, or Lao Zhu might smell him, so they stop some distance away and prepare. Li Lan removes every object from her person that could make a sound, and puts on shoes that will be silent on the rock floor. And she checks, three times, that her trusty sword is at her side.

Er Lang makes sure his own sword is at hand, and then he pulls out the earthquake-causing amulet lent to him by the first judge of the Netherworld. And then he looks at Li Lan.

Her smile, clearly meant to be reassuring, just makes his heart break. He wishes he could hug her, but that might put his scent on her and make it so Lao Zhu can smell her. So all he dares do is lean down and press a kiss to her forehead. She smiles, and squeezes his hand, and then steps back and nods at the amulet.

Er Lang twists the top, as General Fong explained, and then sets it on the ground. Immediately a low rumbling spreads through the rock beneath their feet: not strong enough to damage the cave, if he’s gotten the process right, just strong enough to distract and confuse Lao Zhu.

Li Lan nods at him. And then she hurries into the cave.

The wait that follows might be the worst six hours that he’s ever experienced: worse than those weeks he thought Li Lan would marry Tian Bai, worse than being tied up in that storeroom and waiting for Tian Ching to beat him to death. The only comparable memory he can muster up is watching his mother die, five hundred years ago, or perhaps learning that his father’s family had decided to disown him, despite his joining the Heavenly Guard to save their lives. But in the moment, even those memories pale in comparison to that interminable wait at the mouth of the cave.

The amulet keeps the ground at a low rumble that whole time. A few curious monsters come to the edge of the clearing, apparently seeking the source of the vibrations, and Er Lang puts his hand on the hilt of his sword. But perhaps fate is on his side for once, for they all lose interest and leave.

From the cave, there is only silence. Perhaps this means that things are going well. Or perhaps this means that Li Lan is already dead, and he will never know because he can’t go in there after her, he’ll just wait at the mouth of this cave until he dies as well—

If this works, he is never leaving Li Lan’s side again.

Toward the end of the sixth hour, something prickles at the back of his neck, and thirty seconds later, he sees a glimmer of movement in the darkness of the cave’s entrance.

He takes a step forward.

And then sags in relief when he sees Li Lan creeping toward the cave entrance, holding a heavy-looking stone stele in her arms. He feels such a burst of feeling, of relief and joy and love, and such a pounding in his heart, that he has a moment’s fanciful thought that this is the first time, since his mortal birth, that he has truly been alive.

As soon as she’s made her way out of the shadows of the cave and into the sunlight, she starts to run toward him. He runs to meet her. When they meet in the middle, he needs (more than he has ever needed anything in his immortal life) to hold her in his arms, so he reaches out to take the stele from her, just to get it out of the way—

> > > > >

Er Lang is in the Netherworld. He blinks rapidly a few times, but he isn’t seeing things: the breeze and the sunlight on his skin are gone, and he is a dim, cloudy wasteland, standing in a courtyard before ten thrones. The sixth is empty, but the rest are filled with gaudily dressed people, staring down at him with unreadable expressions. The man in the first throne, more elaborately dressed than the rest, wears the earthquake-causing amulet that Er Lang was just using around his neck. General Fong is at Er Lang’s side. The stele is in his arms.

He stares, and then he looks around him wildly. “Where is Li Lan?” he demands.

“Er Lang, Guard of Heaven—” begins the man in the first throne.

“Where is Li Lan?” Er Lang demands again, desperation filling his voice. “Did you leave her on that island? Do you know how dangerous that place is?”

The first judge rolls his eyes. “The mortal is safe,” he says. “Once you were both touching the stele, we could use our connection to it to transport you both off the island. Since this bargain had nothing to do with her, we sent her to her father’s house.”

Er Lang sags in relief, but it will take a while for the pounding in his heart to subside. He brings a shaky hand to his mouth, and that is when he notices that it is covered in dark veins. He has no powers in the Netherworld, he remembers, so his glamour will have fallen.

He looks up to see the first judge giving him a considering look. But there’s no judgment or mockery in it; it seems almost compassionate. But when the man speaks, his tone is business-like. “Er Lang, Guard of Heaven, you have fulfilled your end of the bargain: you have returned to us the Gengsheng Stele, and in return, we have promised to restore you to life.”

He nods, and a guard takes the stele from Er Lang and walks it up to the first throne. “We are glad to have this priceless artifact returned,” says the first judge. “We thank you for your efforts. And we thank your mortal.”

This is no small thing, coming from a Netherworld judge, and Er Lang, knowing General Fong would appreciate his efforts to be diplomatic, bows in response. “I am pleased we could have helped.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees General Fong bow as well.

When he looks up, the first judge again has a considering look in his eye; Er Lang thinks he looks a bit pleased at this show of manners and respect. When he speaks again, his tone is warmer. “Well, then! What would you like to be restored to?”

Er Lang blinks. “Come again?”

“There’s more than one incantation on this stele,” the judge says. “This one—” he gestures to the top line of text— “will restore you to what you were before the Netherworld claimed you: a heavenly being. But this one—” he gestures lower down— “will restore you to what you were born as: a mortal.”

Again, Er Lang can do little more than blink. “A mortal?”

The judge nods. “Same body, same soul, same mind, same memories, but a mortal, who will live some five decades more and then die, like all mortals. And then we will judge you, like we judge all mortals, and you will be reincarnated to a new life, or to heaven, or to hell.”

“But—why?”

“Why am I offering, or why do I think you would want that? Though I suppose the answer is the same either way: I just watched you fall apart at the thought of your mortal in danger. I thought you might like the opportunity to spend a lifetime with her. If not, it is no matter; it is all the same to me, whether I restore you to a heavenly body or a mortal one.”

Er Lang stares up at the ten thrones, wordless, and sees that while one or two of the judges look exasperated at his uncertainty, most of them look amused, and one or two even look wistful, as though they find this a romantic story.

“May I beg your indulgence while I speak privately to my subordinate?” says General Fong, speaking for the first time since their arrival.

The judge nods, and General Fong pulls him away, out of earshot. When she looks at Er Lang, there’s a warmth in her expression that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen there. “I think that you should take his second offer.”

It’s such an unexpected statement that he jumps a little. “You think I should become mortal? Why? How will I fulfill my obligations as a Heavenly Guard?”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, you wouldn’t be a Heavenly Guard, obviously.”

“You’re saying I could just leave?”

“The agreement was always that you would serve until you had earned enough merits to enter Heaven. The fact that you chose to sacrifice those merits does not change the fact that you did earn them. Your obligation to us was fulfilled one year ago. I never mentioned it because where else would you go? You’d be a heavenly being who couldn’t enter Heaven.”

“I—that’s crazy. To give up immortality? My powers? My chance at Heaven?”

General Fong sighs. “Er Lang, I have known you for five hundred years. And you are a clever investigator, and a good fighter, and a terrible Heavenly Guard. Because in five hundred years, you have never been able to fulfill our primary law: to give up your mortal desires. Even your promotion last year was fought by some of the higher officials, because you’d done the work but your heart and mind were still not in the right place.” 

She shakes her head. “I have always seen this in you. You have always longed for what you were denied in both your mortal and your heavenly lives: a happy family. A happy home. Not running yourself ragged trying to support a sick mother, while your father’s family shunned you; not the solitude required of the Heavenly Guards; but to live happily with people who love you. And any progress you made in eschewing that desire was obliterated when you fell in love with that mortal.”

It’s rather embarrassing to learn that your boss has always known the shameful secret desires of your heart, the ones you thought you’d kept well hidden. “I—but, my chance to reach Heaven.”

“There is more than one path,” General Fong says reasonably. “And maybe the Heavenly Guard isn’t the way you’re meant to achieve Heaven—dramatic deeds, stoic dedication to the cause, changing your mind and heart through sheer force of will.” There’s warmth in her eyes as she assures him, “And that’s fine. Maybe you’re meant to reach Heaven the way most mortals do: by living. By getting a little better with each day that passes, each reincarnation that passes. And maybe a happy, fulfilling lifetime with Li Lan is what will put you on the right path toward Heaven. Maybe it will be better for you than five hundred years of trying to force yourself to forget what’s in your heart through sheer willpower.”

Er Lang stares at her. “Since when are you so kind and encouraging to me?” he mutters. “I don’t trust it.”

She rolls her eyes. “Maybe I’ve had enough of your backtalk, and want you to choose a new life path and get out of my hair.”

He smirks, but then falls into contemplation. “Seriously,” he says after a moment. “Why—”

The general sighs. “You’ve changed in the last year. Time with your mortal has made you . . . happier. Kinder. A better person. And that makes me realize two things: hoping that you learn to let go of your mortal desires is a waste of time. And you deserve to be happy.”

All that she’s said is indeed intriguing. But the idea of the superiority of immortal beings over mortal ones has been drilled into his mind for five hundred years, and the thought of giving up an immortal existence for a mortal one is one he can barely make sense of. “But to choose mortality? A lifetime of drudgery with no powers?”

She rolls her eyes again. “Think of it,” she commands. “Think of a lifetime with your mortal.”

He’s not going to disobey his general. So he does. He thinks of Li Lan in her wedding clothes, looking up at him with love in her eyes. He thinks of sharing a bed with her, falling asleep with her in his arms and waking to her smile. He thinks of meals and chores and the tedious daily tasks mortals all face, made sweeter because he knows he’s doing them for her. He thinks of them traveling the world together, enjoying the journey without demons and monsters to fight. He thinks of Mr. Pan and Amah, and of finally having a family who loves him. He thinks of his and Li Lan’s children: little ones with Li Lan’s sense of adventure and his charm, holding his hand and calling him Father. He thinks of growing old with Li Lan, surrounded by their progeny; he thinks of the last thing he feels in this mortal life being her hand in his, and of their children and grandchildren lighting incense before their tablets.

There’s a stinging in his eyes, and he looks away from General Fong.

“Go,” she says gently. “Live a mortal life, and marry Li Lan. I will release you from your service and give you my blessing.”

“But—she wanted to fight demons and monsters and see the world,” he says. “What if that’s all she wants from me? What if she’s not interested in living a commonplace life with me? Can’t I ask her what she thinks first?”

“I doubt they’ll allow it,” she says, nodding toward the judges, who’ve been waiting very tolerantly but are starting to fidget. “You’re already trying their patience.”

Er Lang stares at the judges. And then he stares at General Fong. And then he stares at the ground.

And finally, when everyone in the room is thoroughly annoyed at how long he’s been thinking, he steps up to the thrones. “I’ve made a decision.”

> > > > >

It’s late afternoon when Er Lang knocks on the door of the Pan home. Amah answers, and when she sees him her whole face fills with relief. “Come in! Come in! Li Lan has been so worried about you.”

She pulls him inside, calling Li Lan’s name, and after a moment, Li Lan appears at the top of the stairs. Again Er Lang feels that curious feeling, that this is the first time since his mortal birth that he’s been truly alive, and maybe she feels similarly because her face lights up like the sun and she races down the stairs and launches herself into his arms.

It is perfection, to have her in his arms, and he’d be happy to stay there all day. But after far too short a time, Li Lan leans back, running her hands over his shoulders, his neck, his face, as though searching for wounds. “What happened? Are you all right? Where did you go? Are you healed? Are you still using a glamour?”

Er Lang glances around and sees that Amah has disappeared, probably to give them privacy, and reminds himself to thank her later. “I’m healed,” he says. “The judges took me to the Netherworld, and I gave them the stele, and they healed me.”

She scowls suspiciously. “Are you lying again?”

He shakes his head with a laugh. “I’m fine,” he assures her. “Really, this time.”

Her shoulders sink in relief, and he can’t help himself: he pulls her into his arms again. “What about you?” he asks. “What happened in that cave? You were in there for so long—” The memory comes back to him, of the dread he felt as he waited for her, and he finds himself leaning his cheek against her smooth, glossy hair.

“That stupid spider,” she laughs. “He settled down for a nap right in front of the stele, and I had to wait hours before he left again.”

“Was that all?” he demands. “I was so worried about you—”

“I was fine. I told you I would be fine.”

He holds her tighter. “I regretted not stopping you, every second you were in there—”

“Hey.” She untangles herself and steps back, though she keeps her hands on his shoulders. “I chose to do it. Because you need to understand something: everything you feel at the thought of me dying in that cave? That’s everything I feel at the thought of you dying because I didn’t go into that cave.”

He stares at her.

“You weren’t the only person whose heart was at stake,” she mumbles, not quite able to meet his eyes.

He stares longer at her. She finally brings her eyes up to meet his, and the look there is one he has always wanted to see on her face, and he can’t resist any longer: he leans down and kisses her.

Her response is immediately and enthusiastic: she curls her fingers into the front of his shirt, and he can feel her smiling against his lips, and all the guilt he feels at the secret he is still keeping from her comes rushing in, and he backs away abruptly.

“Sorry,” he gasps, staring at the ground.

He can hear the indignation in her voice. “Sorry? Why? I’m not. I’ve wanted to do that for the last year.”

His head comes up and he stares at her in surprise. “The last year? But you never even acted like . . .”

“I was never certain how you felt,” she says, and there’s a shyness to her manner that is so unlike the Li Lan he knows that he can’t help staring—until he thinks, it’s no surprise it’s unlike her; he’s never seen her when she’s trying to talk about her feelings like this. “You were so reluctant to let me join you at all, and you were always talking about what a bad idea it was for me to be there, and even when you stopped that, you never treated me in a romantic way. I would hug you and hold your hand and talk about how glad I was to be there, and you never, ever reciprocated. I thought I was the only one feeling this way.”

He blinks, utterly bowled over by this new interpretation of the last year. “. . . sorry?”

“But then, remember when we were fighting that yaoguai and you got so injured? I thought you were dying, and I realized . . . I didn’t want to be without you. Ever. And I wasn’t going to give up on . . . _us,_ so easily.”

Into his mind comes the memory of that day, of how Li Lan had told him solemnly “You don’t get to decide how I feel about you” before hugging him tightly. And how there was a noticeable change in how often she touched him after that night. It all makes a lot more sense now.

“That’s why I had to help you get the stele.”

Li Lan is staring at him, nervous and hopeful, and Er Lang’s heart is soaring. Still, the fear lingers that what she cares for is the adventure he offers, not him, and he steps back. “I have to tell you something.”

Her face falls a little. “Okay?”

He looks around the room and sees needlework left on a chair; Amah’s, no doubt, because Li Lan has only been here a few hours and anyway she hates needlework. He strides toward the chair and Li Lan follows him uncertainly. He picks up the needle, pricks his finger, and squeezes gently around the wound until a drop of red blood wells up on his finger. 

He takes a deep breath.

And then he turns and shows his finger to Li Lan.

She looks utterly baffled a moment. And then her eyes widen. “Er Lang,” she says. “You’re bleeding red.”

He nods.

“How?” she demands.

He gently sucks on the tip of his finger, to stop the bleeding and to give himself time to think. “The Netherworld judges,” he says finally. “They gave me a choice. I could be restored to what I was before the Netherworld claimed me . . . or I could be restored to what I was born as.”

Her lips part in surprise. “Er Lang,” she says, finally understanding. “You’re mortal now.”

He nods.

She seems to think about this for a few moments, then asks gently, “Why did you make that choice?”

“General Fong encouraged me to,” he says. “Because . . . you know I’ve never been a very good heavenly being. I’ve never been good at letting go of mortal desires. She thought I might be happier as a mortal.”

“But what about earning a promotion? A life of ease and bliss in Heaven?”

“I can still achieve Heaven. I’ll live and die like a mortal now, and be reincarnated. If I live good enough lives, then eventually . . .”

She nods, her eyes still wide as she processes all this, and he takes a deep breath. “This is why I’m sorry.”

Li Lan tilts her head curiously.

“You were happy helping me fulfill my Heavenly Guard duties,” he says. “Traveling the world. Having adventures. And now I’ve taken that from you. I didn’t mean to,” he insists. “They wouldn’t let me consult with you before I made my decision, so I just had to . . . And now I’ve taken that life away from you.”

Her eyes soften. “Are you happy with your choice?” she asks.

He nods mutely.

“Well, if I can demand you let me follow you around to fulfill my dream, I think you’re also allowed to make a choice that lets you be happy.” She smiles. “I’ll miss it, but I got a year of adventure most mortals will never get.” Laughter dances in her eyes. “Besides, I wouldn’t mind taking things a little easier for a while. That was an exhausting year.”

Still, he can’t wipe the worried frown from his brow.

“What?” she asks. “You don’t believe me?”

He hesitates.

She steps forward and puts one hand comfortingly on his arm. “I’m not upset with you.”

“I believe that. I just . . “

“You just?”

He hesitates, and then it all comes spilling out. “You ended your engagement with Tian Bai when you realized you couldn’t be with him and live your dream at the same time. And you _loved_ him, for so many years. I read that love letter you wrote him. It was . . . beautiful. I cried that night, knowing that no one had ever written me such a beautiful love letter, and no one ever would.”

She laughs, thinking he’s joking. He’s not.

“And if you could end your engagement to Tian Bai over your dream of traveling the world, how could I ever hope that you’d want . . .” He looks at a spot over her left shoulder. “You might have cared for me once, but now, like Tian Bai, I’m preventing you from living your dream.”

Li Lan is silent a long moment. When he finally forces himself to look up at her, she’s watching him with a warmth in her eyes that goes straight to his heart, like a jolt of adrenaline. “There are other ways to see the world,” she says. “The Heavenly Guard aren’t the only ticket out of Malacca.”

He blinks. “I suppose.”

She takes a step closer to him. “And that isn’t the only reason I ended my engagement to Tian Bai. If I had truly wanted to marry him, we could have found a way to work it out—to achieve our dreams while being married.”

He swallows hard. “You didn’t truly want to marry him?”

“I’d loved him when we were young, and I held onto hope all the time he was away. But he never wrote; he didn’t even tell me when he came back. And when I discovered he’d gotten engaged to Isabel for the sake of money, and hadn’t bothered to tell me about it, even when we were alone together for hours . . . what feelings I had left started to fade.” She swallows. “And they vanished when I accidentally summoned you to my house. I knew they were completely gone when I saw your face again.”

His heart is pounding. “Li Lan . . .” he whispers, as hope blossoms in his chest.

She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. “I only accepted Tian Bai’s proposal,” she says, “because I thought I’d never see you again. This last year . . . I wanted to go with you for the adventure—but I also just wanted to go with you. I wanted to see, if we spent time together, if I’d still feel this way, and if you could feel the same way. And I do . . . and I hope you do too.”

He stares at her a long while, while the future he’s been wishing for unrolls before his mind’s eye like a scroll. And then he smiles. “You’ve never asked me what the mortal desire I couldn’t give up is.”

Confusion touches her face, but she obediently asks, “What’s the mortal desire you couldn’t give up?”

He takes a deep breath. “To be loved. To have a happy home. To have a family.”

She looks up at him in surprise. And then she grins.

“Pan Li Lan,” he says, taking her hands in his his, “I have loved you without hope for a year, because I knew a Heavenly Guard could never marry. But I suddenly find myself mortal and unemployed, and I want to travel the world with you, and have children with you, and grow old with you. Will you marry me? I can’t take you to fight demons and monsters any longer. But I can promise that you’ll get to enjoy my handsome face any time you like.”

Li Lan’s eyes are like stars, and she steps forward to pull him into a tight embrace, and maybe it’s being mortal now, but he could swear he feels this embrace all the way down to his core, in a way he has never felt before.

“Yes,” she whispers, as he leans his head against hers.

“An engagement!” Amah cries from somewhere in the corner; apparently they didn’t have as much privacy as he thought. “Thank goodness!”

“Finally!” booms Mr. Pan, and Er Lang laughs in embarrassment and feels Li Lan do the same. “I can finally give my daughter a wedding.”

“Go away,” Li Lan calls. “I’m busy.” And she leans back until her mouth finds Er Lang’s, and he finally _(finally)_ gets a kiss that lasts more than a moment.

“Fine, we’re leaving,” says Amah. Er Lang is not sure he believes her, but Li Lan’s lips are soft and her arms are eager and she fits perfectly into his embrace and that’s what matters right now.

“So that’s what it feels like to be _properly_ kissed,” Er Lang says breathlessly some time later.

He’s gratified to see that she’s equally breathless. “Apparently so.”

> > > > >

Er Lang and Li Lan are married in Malacca—the neighbors are mostly kind enough not to mention that this is the second time she’s handed out wedding invitations in the last year—and one month later, they set out on a Dutch ship bound for India. Mr. Pan’s spice business has been flourishing in the last year, and he’s decided to branch out into trading other foodstuffs; he’s authorized Er Lang and Li Lan to be his envoys, traveling the seas to make business deals and source new products, while he manages the business at home.

Er Lang puts their bags in their cabin, then comes back up to the deck to find Li Lan at the front of the ship, smiling at the open sea.

“Happy to be on our way, wife?” he asks, because he’s allowed to call her that now, so he does so whenever he can.

She slips her arm around his waist. “I’ve got the whole world before me and you by my side,” she says, beaming up at him. “How could I not be happy?”

And Er Lang feels just the same way.

> > > > >

fin


End file.
